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A.M. #41: St. Louis

Posted Apr 12, 2013
by Aaron Portzline
| 0 comments

What lies before the Blue Jackets -- short term and long term -- is a daunting task. The Jackets are still alive in the Stanley Cup playoffs hunt with eight games left in the season, but they face an almost must-win game tonight against the St. Louis Blues.

It is the Blue Jackets' penultimate home game of the season, and it has all the makings of an explosive night in Nationwide Arena. The puck - or is that a grenade? - drops at 7 p.m.

(begin John Facenda voice)

The reborn Blue Jackets are earnest, scrappy and relentless, the embodiment of the emerging city they call home. They are the NHL's underdog darlings, left for dead in the depths of cruel winter, but sprung to life as spring has emerged. Theirs is a ship steered by goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, but it is held in form starboard and port by a fast and furious group of checkers. Their want is the opponent's woe.

Their combatants on this frozen sheet are the St. Louis Blues ... large, beastly, untamed and ruthless, as if concocted in a mad scientist's laboratory. That evil genius is Ken Hitchcock, who once ambled bear-like through these halls draped in the home colors, only now to return the enemy.

(end ridiculousness)

The Blue Jackets will welcome center Brandon Dubinsky and winger Jared Boll back into the lineup tonight. Boll has missed five games with an undisclosed injury, while Dubinsky has been out two games with an illness.

This should provide a boost of energy for the Jackets, who would appear to have an "energy" edge tonight. The Jackets haven't played since a 4-0 thumping of San Jose on Tuesday, while St. Louis wraps up a four-game road trip tonight after playing Thursday in St. Paul., a 2-0 win over Minnesota. They arrived in Columbus around 2:30 a.m. last night and did not take a morning skate this morning.

"The message tonight is going to be coming out of the gate," Blue Jackets coach Todd Richards said. "It's gotta be 60 minutes. We can't have 10-minute lapses. There are going to be parts of the game when they have some momentum, but if we can keep that to a minimum - one shift, two shifts, whatever it is - and get back to playing either even hockey or us carrying the play, I think that'll play off for the third period.

"I've been wrong before. But that's what I think ... I think we're going to be ready."

The Blues beat the Blue Jackets 3-1 on April 5 in St. Louis. It was a thorough whipping - the Blues scored at even-strength, on the power play, and short-handed -- and there were long lulls of activity in the game ... just as Hitchcock prefers.

"When we played in St. Louis, there wasn't much give there," Blue Jackets winger R.J. Umberger said. "There wasn't much room. No second efforts. No loose pucks around the net. They do a good job cleaning that stuff up."

Remarkably, the Blue Jackets are the last team to score against the Blues. Since then, the Blues have won by shutout in Detroit, Nashville and Minnesota. G Brian Elliott's shutout streak stands at 189:31. The franchise record is 196:15 (set in 1968 when Glenn Hall and Jacques Plante shared duties) is only 6:45 away from falling.

Hitchcock has said the last couple of days that rookie Jake Allen will start tonight in Columbus. We shall see.

"They're tight-checking, big ... it's a committed group to defending," Richards said. "Three shutouts in a row on the road is pretty impressive. The goalies are playing well, making the saves when there's a little bit of a breakdown, but they don't give you a lot of space on the ice.

"The big thing for us, is investing early on. We have to invest in this. It starts in the first period. Pucks behind their defensemen, be physical on them, try to get some energy in the building. We have to use our legs."

The return of Boll and Dubinsky - two energy players -- is timely for the Blue Jackets, especially since the Blues were seen as running roughshod over them in the previous meeting.

"There weren't any major things, but there were some subtle things I think that were going on in the game," Richards said. "I think our guys will be ready."

Side dishes:

-- Boll said he wouldn't play if he weren't able to fight. "If I'm in, I can go." He also said he wasn't returning tonight specifically because of the opponent: "It's just like a playoff game. It is a must-win. I just wanted to come back as soon as I could. It just happens to be against St. Louis. But everybody knows how they play, how they like to play. It's going to be a good one."

-- Dubinsky wasn't too keen on talking about his ailment. Here was the Q&A: How are you feeling? "I'm in." Have you ever been that sick before? "Yes. Once. But it wasn't this season." What was it exactly? A virus? The flu? "I'm playing tonight."

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